]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2015/02/21/the-experiment/feed/0A look at the Canon S110http://eugenia.queru.com/2015/01/26/a-look-at-the-canon-s110/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2015/01/26/a-look-at-the-canon-s110/#commentsMon, 26 Jan 2015 20:22:59 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=10043I was close on getting a Panasonic LX100 for its 4k video, but then I found a deal at Amazon for the Canon S110, for just $180 (1/5th of the LX100’s price). The S110 doesn’t have 4k or full manual control, but it does have the bare minimum to be able to shoot nice videos: exposure compensation & lock, manual focus, flat colors, an ND filter, and 1080/24p at a good bitrate. If you half-press the shutter button, it also gives you the shutter speed, so you might be able to lock the exposure at a shutter speed close to 1/48th, to achieve an even more filmic look. The camera has a larger sensor and faster lens than most P&S cameras, so for the price, it was a steal. I haven’t shot anything interesting with it yet, but so far, I like what I’m seeing.
]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2015/01/26/a-look-at-the-canon-s110/feed/0Diet for Athleteshttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/30/diet-for-athletes/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/30/diet-for-athletes/#commentsMon, 01 Dec 2014 06:20:36 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=10012I recently started exercising again (I’ll be doing endurance, weights, and sprints). My lungs are pushed to their limits, so I need to be on top of my game everyday. To accomplish this, I became much more strict with my diet. Not everybody has to be as strict though. This below is the diet I’d personally do to maximize casual sports performance, reduce inflammation, and be overall healthy without cutting down too many foods. Disclaimer: I’m not a nutritionist.

Processed foods and ‘weird’ ingredients: None. Not even gluten-free processed foods.Grains: None, except for fermented/sprouted brown rice (you can do it at home, or buy it from Amazon, TJ’s also brought some in recently too!). Have such rice only up to one or two meals per week.Pseudograins: None, except for soaked quinoa, up to once a week (I personally do none at all, irritates my gut). If you can avoid quinoa though, do so.Dairy: Fermented-only, e.g. European style full-fat yogurt (TJ’s), cheese, sour cream, home-made full-fat goat kefir (I personally do none anymore). For milk, you go for unsweetened almond milk.Eggs: Pastured-only from Whole Foods or Farmer’s market (or at the very least, free-range organic). 7-10 eggs a week (cholesterol from eggs is a myth).Nuts & Seeds: All are ok except peanuts, but they have to be raw, and then soaked (each kind of nut has different soaking times, look it up online). After draining them, these nuts & seeds keep up to 3 days in the fridge. Eat these only up to a small handful a day.Flours: Almond, coconut and a bit of tapioca flour is permitted only in a few, special occasions in the year. Avoid all these “paleo gluten-free desserts/breads”. These don’t really exist in this diet.Legumes: All are ok except soy and its byproducts, but they have to be soaked in water for 24 hours before cooking them in high heat. Check out lentils carefully, they tent to have barley and small stones among them. Gluten-free tamari soy sauce is ok to use (the only soy product allowed). Have legumes up to twice a week.Fats: Coconut oil, avocado oil, olive oil, grass-fed butter, animal fats. Don’t restrict these healthy fats. Instead, avoid all trans-fats and most vegetable seed oils (particularly margarine).Veggies: All, including white potatoes and other tubers/roots. 2/3s of what you eat daily in weight, should be veggies, and some of it should be raw. Include many kinds of new veggies in your diet, even the ones you never had before (e.g. sorrel, raw young garlic etc). Also eat fermented foods almost daily, e.g. unpasteurized kimchi, sauerkraut, water kefir.Sea vegetables: Yes, from parts of the ocean that are clean. A tablespoon of various types of seaweed, daily (prepare it yourself to ensure they’re gluten-free, or get a GF one from Costco).Fruits: All in season. Juices are not permitted. Smoothies are permitted, but the whole fruit goes in it, not just the sugary juice.Fish: All, particularly the fatty & smaller ones (low in mercury). They all must be wild. Best options are wild Alaskan salmon and wild sardines with bones (canned ok).Shellfish: All. They don’t have to be wild. Canned are ok too. If they’re in vegetable seed oil, strain them, and add lemon. The most nutritionally-dense shellfish is oysters.Meat: All, but only wild or pastured/grass-fed (3-4 times a week). Seafood in this diet is the primary source of protein, get seafood daily!Offal: All, from pastured animals, once or twice a week. Liver twice a month. Heart has lots of CoQ10 and PQQ, which is great for mitochondria support.Sugars: None, not even artificial. Some local, raw, unfiltered honey is permitted in RAW desserts (or added in gelatin-based but otherwise raw desserts). Organic brown sugar is permitted only if you’re using it for your water kefir (the kefir bacteria will eat it up during fermentation, so sugar is not an issue in this case). Don’t use honey in water kefir (honey kills the kefir bacteria).Salt: Yes, Celtic sea salt. Avoid Himalayan, because while it’s otherwise very healthy, it’s also very high in fluoride (a little known fact).Spices: Yes, particularly turmeric and ginger. Avoid ready-made mixes of many different spices, because these tend to have wheat fillers.Bone Broth: At least 1 cup, daily (reheated and drank as-is, or used in soups). Slow-cook it for 24 hours with filtered water, pastured bones, 1/4 of a lemon OR 1 tablespoon of apple cider vinegar, and celery/carrots/onion only at the last two hours of the cooking process. Keeps up to a week in the fridge in jars, or up to a month in plastic bags in the freezer. Bone broth will keep your joints and knees healthy during exercise.Coffee: Avoid all caffeine. It’ll take you two weeks to become free from it (drink less and less every day). Expect withdrawal symptoms, like headaches.Teas: Herbal-only. Best are chamomile, and particularly Greek Mountain Tea (found in Mediterranean stores only).Alcohol: If you have to party, rarely have some cider, or some wine. Particularly avoid beer at all costs because of its gluten.Vitamins: The modern food and water don’t provide as much nutrition per weight as they did in the paleolithic times. Take D3 with breakfast, and get its level up to 80 ng/ml (test yearly to make sure you don’t overdose). Magnesium 2-3 times a week, 20 mins before bed. CoQ10 Ubiquinol 3 times a week, and K2-Mk4 2-3 times a week (lunch time). B1 only once or twice a month, with dinner. B12-sublingual or other vitamins only if a blood test reveals that you’re low. Take Zinc once a week — if you’re not eating oysters weekly. Avoid multi-vitamins.Drugs: Avoid NSAIDs, steroids and other drugs that aren’t absolutely essential for your health condition (always with your doctor’s approval).Water: Lots of it, but with no fluoride added (so avoid most tap water).

Regarding GMO/Organic: for some veggies/fruits it makes sense to get them as non-GMO and organic, for others it doesn’t. It depends on the kind of veggie/fruit we’re talking about. There are lists about this topic online.

Typical Diet:Breakfast, after exercise: 1 egg, kimchi, tablespoon of seaweed salad, reheated baked sweet potato with butter on it, a reheated cup of bone broth, fruits. The sweet potato will refuel you.Lunch: Seafood (I usually open a shellfish or sardines can for lunch) with green veggies or salad, cheese, and fruits or smoothie.Snack: Chamomile, or almond milk, or home-made milk kefir, or a handful of soaked nuts/seeds.Dinner: Seafood or meat/offal with veggies and 1 cup of starches. Also, salad, and fruits or yogurt with berries.

Regarding the mentioned starch at dinner time: use only for the days you exercise. For example:
Mon: Beans (soaked)
Tue: White Potato
Wed: Rice (sprouted)
Thu: White Potato or parsnips and other starchy roots
Fri: Lentils (soaked)
Sat: Quinoa or rice (soaked)

On Sundays, presumably the only day you don’t exercise (change it around if you are), go lower in starch:Breakfast: Just a smoothie.Lunch: Semi-starchy roots (e.g. carrots, beets, rutabaga, turnips), along the rest of the lunch.Snack: Bone broth, or herbal tea.Dinner: Green veggies (low carb), along the rest of the dinner.

This is a lower carb diet compared to the western diet, but it’s not very low carb, and it’s definitely not ketogenic. Don’t count calories/carbs. Just eat as much as you need, and have enough of the right fats (don’t skip them).

Fuel with more starch than usual for two days before an official race/game.

For pasta lovers, this is your pasta from now on. I personally prefer these over real pasta (especially the one made out of zucchini).

For pizza lovers, there are options, but none taste authentic I’m afraid. I’d suggest some rice-based pizza dough, in very special occasions only (Trader Joe’s has one that’s a bit acceptable).

How to do this cheaply in the US: veggies/fruits from Asian/Mexican stores, and the Farmer’s Market. Costco for seaweed salad, kimchi, organic ground beef. Trader Joe’s for raw nuts, canned sardines, canned Alaskan salmon, canned oysters. Dollar Store for other canned shellfish. Asian stores for shellfish, rabbit, duck gizzards, wild white fish. Pastured meat/offal/eggs is going to be expensive no matter what (although most goat/lamb is pastured in the US, find it in Mediterranean shops at acceptable prices).

Finally…

You’ll do worse before you do much better. It’ll take 3-4 weeks to adjust to this diet. During that time you will also be detoxing from sugar, gluten etc, so it’s to be expected that you will under-perform. But when that part is done, you should get much better than before, and quickly.

Good luck!

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/30/diet-for-athletes/feed/0Regarding Chauvinismhttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/03/regarding-chauvinism/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/03/regarding-chauvinism/#commentsTue, 04 Nov 2014 06:53:22 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=10003It rubs me the wrong way when people say “I’m proud that the XYZ place exists in my country” (e.g. a monument, or a natural place). Why would anyone be “proud” for something they had nothing to do with, is beyond me. For example, why would you be proud if Parthenon, or Santorini is in Greece, for example? You had nothing to do with either the building of the Parthenon, nor the volcano that created the Santorini island.

The correct vocabulary would be “I’m happy to live close by to such a place”. Anything more than that, is chauvinism at worse, or stupidity at best.

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/11/03/regarding-chauvinism/feed/0Panasonic LX100: Best P&S Ever Madehttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/09/24/panasonic-lx100-best-ps-ever-made/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/09/24/panasonic-lx100-best-ps-ever-made/#commentsWed, 24 Sep 2014 08:32:36 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=9996I’ve been a vocal supporter of Canon in the past, both for their dSLRs and their P&S cameras, but rest assured, these days are over. Canon is left behind in dSLRs when it comes to video, while they consciously removed existing video features from their new P&S (exposure lock and custom colors are now omitted from most new P&S), making them utterly useless. I sincerely can not recommend any new cheap Canon P&S anymore for video, while their 3 year old models performed better in terms of feature-set.

Sony has made some evolutionary steps in the right direction, but it’s Panasonic who has come to its own with their 4/3s cameras (particularly the GH4), and their P&S line. Their latest offering, of their popular LX line, is the LX100, arguably the best P&S ever. It comes with a large 4/3s sensor, a very fast f1.7 lens (with a 43mm thread to add filters!), 24p/30p/60p frame rate, 100 mbps bitrate at 4k resolution (!), full manual control, and some color control too.

Basically, it makes it the perfect video camera for indie filmmakers who don’t want to bother with lenses (e.g. if they shoot guerrilla-style all over the place), while retaining the large sensors found in dSLR-type cameras. The 4k quality you’re going to get for $900 is unparalleled too.

Now, if you don’t want to bother with 4k editing (which can be slow), then the tiny Canon EOS-M mirrorless camera is still the best bet (coming with all the video features one would expect from a Canon dSLR). It’s now selling for about $230 on eBay, as new, which makes it very cheap for what is capable of. You’d still need to buy 2-3 lenses for it though. Overall, with a wide prime, and a cheap zoom you’re probably be paying about $500. Which is still cheaper than the LX100’s $900. But you don’t get 4k or the ease of mind of using a P&S.

Personally, for the type of videos I shoot (art-type stuff), these are my best options right now.

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/09/24/panasonic-lx100-best-ps-ever-made/feed/3Oopsie bunshttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/08/04/oopsie-buns/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/08/04/oopsie-buns/#commentsTue, 05 Aug 2014 02:47:41 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=9985Oopsies are the Americanized version of the French souffle. My French husband loved them. They can be baked in ramekins for a more authentic souffle taste (in this case omit the almond flour), or as bread buns. They’re extremely low carb, and Paleo/Primal.

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350 F (175 C). On the bowl with the whites, add the cream of tartar.
2. Beat the whites in high speed until very-very stiff, about 4-5 minutes.
3. Add the cheese and flour to the yolk bowl, and beat until smooth, about 1-2 minutes.
4. Fold the yolk mixture slowly into the whites, and mix carefully with a spatula for a few seconds.
5. Spoon the mixture in 6 pieces, on a baking sheet with a parchment paper. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden brown. Serve immediately.

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/08/04/oopsie-buns/feed/010 Foods to Survive on a Deserted Islandhttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/28/10-foods-to-survive-on-a-deserted-island/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/28/10-foods-to-survive-on-a-deserted-island/#commentsTue, 29 Jul 2014 00:09:53 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=9962Let’s assume you shipwreck on a deserted island (knock wood). Somehow, half-buried in the sand you find a magic box with a message in it. The message asks you to specify 10 foods that the box will magically bring to you every day. These will be the same foods every day, so your choices have to be very specific. If you choose foods like pizza, which hold no nutritional value, you will die within a few months.

I was inspired to write this blog post because of the story about Napoleon. He was imprisoned for a while in the 1800s, and was asked what food he would like in prison. His captors would serve him the same food daily, hoping that he would expire “naturally” out of malnutrition.

But here’s how to trick the magic box (or your captors) to give you the highest bang for your buck, not only keeping you alive until rescue arrives, but to make you thrive!

1. 150 gr of pastured beef or goat heart
The heart must be cooked in bone broth with onion, garlic, sea salt, and grass-fed butter. We pick a heart over muscle meat because it’s more nutritious and it has the highest levels of CoQ10. We don’t pick liver because its extremely high levels of copper and A will work against your health if consumed daily (although liver must be consumed once a week on different living conditions, of course).

2. 150 gr of wild Alaskan salmon, sashimi raw
Very high levels of omega-3 and many other nutrients. Wild sardines or wild trout would be my No2 choices.

3. 100 gr of wild, raw oysters
If liver is the most nutrient-dense food of all, oysters is the No2. We pick it because of its high levels of zinc among others.

7. 250 gr of white potatoes, baked
We need some starches, no matter what keto people say. We carry friendly bacteria in our gut that can only live on starch. White potatoes also carry the important resistant type of starch.

8. 100 gr of asparagus, or 100 gr of an avocado
Asparagus seared in coconut oil. Avocados would be my personal second choice, but you might want to pick that instead, if you are after more fiber and even more nutrition.

10. 1 pink grapefruit per day
Antioxidants and enough vitamin C. If grapefruits are unavailable (due to season), 150 gr of blueberries will do.

And of course, lots of natural, spring water.

As you can see below (click to view larger), that set of foods daily give you pretty much over 100% of your daily needs for most needed nutrients. You can’t go wrong with these!

Don’t be afraid about the trans-fats shown there and the low omega-3 shown in the chart. The database that contained similar foods did not include their pastured/wild versions, and so the data in that respect are a bit skewed. The vitamins/minerals are pretty much correct though.

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/28/10-foods-to-survive-on-a-deserted-island/feed/0Best Cauliflower Rice Tipshttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/26/best-cauliflower-rice-tips/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/26/best-cauliflower-rice-tips/#commentsSun, 27 Jul 2014 03:56:47 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=9947Cauliflower fried rice is the best substitute for Chinese fried rice on low carb and grain-free Paleo diets. Here’s a generic recipe for it, but accompanied with hints and tips on how to make the recipe work best. You see, if you treat cauliflower like rice, you will end up with a mushy, cabbage-smelling dish. Following the tips below, will bring your fried cauliflower much closer to the real thing.

Method
1. On a small frying pan, with a tablespoon of olive oil, crack an egg on low heat. Using a wooden spoon, swirl continuously the egg, until you achieve a scrambled egg consistency. Turn off the heat before the egg is fully cooked, set aside.
2. On a wok or frying pan, add the chicken (or shrimp), 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil, peas, mushrooms/veggies, leeks, garlic, and black pepper. Stir occasionally. Add the soy sauce. Cook in medium heat until the chicken is done and the leeks have become transparent and soft, and there’s no liquid left in the pan. Set aside.
3. Using a food processor and its S blade, add half of the cauliflower in it. Give it 5-6 jolts until the cauliflower has become “riced”. Do not make the pieces too small, but it should still feel a bit chunky. Set aside, and process the rest of the cauliflower.
4. On a very large frying pan (I used a 14″) that is not wok-like (but rather it has a flat surface), add 1.5 tablespoons of olive oil, the turmeric (if using), and the cauliflower. Under high heat, fry the cauliflower, stirring occasionally, until it starts to get burned marks and it starts to feel dry.
5. Add the meat mixture in to the big frying pan with the cauliflower rice, and stir. Add the scrambled eggs, green onion, and stir. A minute later, turn off the heat, and serve.

Tips
1. We use a very large, leveled frying pan instead of a wok because woks tend to trap moist. We’re trying to get rid of as much moist from the dish, because it’s that moist that brings the cabbage smell to cauliflower.
2. We’re using leeks because these emulate the sweetness of rice. Without it, the dish comes out a bit flat in taste.
3. Do not process the cauliflower too much, or too much moist will come out of them.
4. Do not crack the egg on the same pan as the cauliflower. While scrambling the egg on the side of the pan works with rice, it doesn’t work as well for cauliflower. Same goes for the meat mixture.

]]>http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/26/best-cauliflower-rice-tips/feed/0Extant: a reviewhttp://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/20/extant-a-review/
http://eugenia.queru.com/2014/07/20/extant-a-review/#commentsSun, 20 Jul 2014 11:16:32 +0000http://eugenia.queru.com/?p=9944Watched the first two episodes of “Extant”, the new Spielberg-produced sci-fi show, starring Halle Berry. There are several problems with the series. It’s really a surprise having a veteran like Spielberg allowing such easy mistakes from his writers.

The biggest mistake is that the series is a localized story. No sci-fi show or movie ever survived in the long run by only telling a localized story without providing a larger “universe” for the world that the story is taking place. We don’t know what the year is, we don’t know what kind of technology is available (from one side we have high AI and interstellar space travel, but then we have old fashioned cars and button-pushing washing machines? Really?), we know nothing of how the world is organized in that time, and we know nothing about how humans got so far in space, or how far. This is a grave mistake for any sci-fi story. It shows no vision. It just shows a guy with a script getting the go-ahead to shoot the series, but that’s not the type of vision that creates cult, or successful shows.

Cult shows are cult because they make their extended universe believable by providing a lot of information about it. It’s as simple as that. People get hooked with believable detail, even if the show might even mildly suck in other perspectives. For example. Babylon 5 was a tragedy in terms of filmmaking (camera, sound work, and even dialog was the worst), but the believable “large”, epic story it told, and the detail it provided for the world it operated on, it made it a cult show. Star Trek and Star Wars owe their success to this type of “complete universe” vision too. Extant is not such a show. It’s just an idea, set in a non-descript world.

And then there’s the AI. Halle Berry and her husband in the show have adopted a child android as their son, which behaves 99% like a human. This itself is unbelievable. Having worked in AI myself for years, such type of AI won’t be developed for many hundreds of years later, *if ever*. People have talked since the ’70s that “true AI is just 10 years away”, but of course this hasn’t happened. The kind of AI that we WILL get (most likely through Google) is going to be similar to the computer on Star Trek: TNG. Smart enough to carry away complex actions, but not even close to be “human”. This whole AI subplot weakens the series as a believable sci-fi show. Of course, Spielberg himself created an “AI” movie back in the ’90s, so he’s obviously a fan of the concept. I’m willing to forget about this, since he has personal ties to the subject matter, but not insisting on universe-building from the get-go, it shows that the series is amateur hour that has come across to lots of money.

My advice: watch it for fun, but don’t invest in it, because it will disappoint.

Execution
1. Wash the zucchinis and cut them in half. Using the Blade A of the spiralizer device (the blade with no triangles that creates ribbon-like noodles), spiralize them. Then cut the long spiralized ribbons to not be so long. If you don’t have a spiralizer, cut the zucchinis in half, and then cut thin slices out of them (about 3″ long each). Preheat oven at 400 F (200 C).

2. On the stove, use a deep frying pan and pour the olive oil in it. Under medium heat lightly fry the onion and peas in it for 3 minutes. Stir occasionally with a wooden spoon.
3. Add the cream of mushroom soup, milk, and stir until the mixture becomes smooth, it starts bubbling and most of its liquid has evaporated. Turn off the heat.
4. Drain the tuna cans, and pour the tuna into the hot mixture, and very gently stir 2-3 times. Add the zucchini noodles and frozen peas and stir gently again a few times.

5. Pour the whole thing into a baking dish. Crumble the optional pork rinds with your fingers and spread them on top. Bake for ~30 minutes until it gets golden brown, and there’s not a lot of liquid left in the dish (zucchini tends to release liquid). Serve hot.